


And in Their Arms, Enchanted

by Razzledazzy



Category: Wooden Overcoats
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Animal Transformation, Fey!Chapman, LISTEN I JUST WROTE THIS BECAUSE I WANTED IT TO EXIST ENJOY MAYBE?, M/M, Self-Indulgent, Vampire!Rudyard, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 14:23:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13296738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Razzledazzy/pseuds/Razzledazzy
Summary: Rudyard Funn has lived in Piffling Vale for over 200 years and he's settled into a comfortable routine.One man's arrival throws his whole life into chaos.





	And in Their Arms, Enchanted

The village of Piffling Vale had been founded centuries ago as a haven for the misguided and unloved. Its history was not vain, or proud, but inclusive and forgetful. It was a fairly standard village, excusing the oddness of its residents.

It had your standard oddities, the old lady that keeps birds in what might have once been a clocktower, teenagers that were always knee deep in philosophical discussions, your typical headless atheist Vicar, a handful of werewolves, two twin vampires, and a smattering of other supernatural outcasts. The village had been that way ever since it was founded. Who cared about the tottering of the mainland biases when being odd was often more useful than being normal?  

This was all information that didn’t matter to Rudyard Funn, it was so commonplace as to be banal, the village had barely changed in the 196 years that he had lived there. The residents changed sometimes, but usually not in the traditional sense of the word, and more often than not time trudged on and Piffling Vale stayed safe in its bubble of oddity.

That had all changed with the arrival of _Eric Chapman_.

“Somehow, he moved here without even the slightest bit of knowledge about what _moving here_ might entail. How does that happen?” Rudyard ranted, pacing back and forth in the showroom of Funn Funerals.

Antigone was nowhere to be seen, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t listening. The primary audience to Rudyard’s ranting was made up of Madeline and Georgie, the latter holding the mouse in her hands as she sat and listened.

“It does seem like an oversight on the mayor’s account.” Georgie offered back, not moving from her position on the floor. "I can't believe the mayor would allow one of them here if they’re unaware.”

“I know! Another undertaker! Why on Earth would we need two funeral parlors? Do you realize how long some of the people in this village _live_? We were already struggling to get by and-”

“Okay, that’s not what I thought you were mad about, but it’ll turn out alright.” Georgie turned to hide the smile on her face, spotting a delicate spider make its way down the wall. With a careful movement, Georgie held her hand out for the spider to jump to, settling it on her lap next to Madeline. The spider and the mouse conferred for a moment, too quiet for Rudyard’s advanced hearing to catch.

No one in the room was paying attention to him any longer.

Sensing this, Rudyard sighed and admitted defeat for the night. It clearly wasn’t important enough to try and solve this problem tonight.

Whatever might happen in the meantime, eventually something would drive Eric Chapman off the island, whether or not Rudyard had a hand in it.

 

* * *

 

“Look at him, how dare he?” Rudyard groused, his fingers and face pressed up against the window. The current object of his observation (and who was he kidding, the only object of his observation these days) was outside of his new funeral home, applying coats of pastel paint and cleaning up the storefront. How dare he swap out the rose bushes for rutabagas! Those rose bushes had been there for half a century and he just uprooted them from history like they meant _nothing._

Rudyard Funn was pointedly _not_ observing the way sunlight caught on his skin and illuminated the constellations of freckles dusting his nose and cheeks, or how it bounced off his blonde hair to cast a golden shimmer against the pale blue paint he'd slapped all over the main exterior walls.

Not that Eric Chapman’s hair was important.

“Who moves in across the street from a vampire and then uproots all the wild garlic?” He continued to complain. None of Eric Chapman’s actions made any sense. He’d remodeled the whole storefront, removed most of the religious iconography and put in bright colors and glass tables and a lobby. What sort of funeral parlor was he trying to run? It looked more like a bloody country club.

Georgie, stuck in her half shift due to the phase of the moon, flicked an ear in his direction. Annoyance clear in the dismissal and the movement. “If you’re going to keep talking _about_ him you might as well go talk  _to_ him.”

“Nonsense,” Rudyard tutted without making a move away from the window pane.

It was at that moment that Eric Chapman seemed to notice he was being watched. He stopped digging and looked around until he spotted Rudyard in the window. He gave a friendly wave and got back to his gardening.

“Ugh, he’s covered in dirt.” Rudyard complained.

“You’re a funeral director, so is he. I’m pretty sure it’s literally in your job descriptions to be familiar with dirt to some extent,” Georgie barked in reply. With a shake of her head, she stood up and walked out of the room without another word.

“But he’s making it look good. That isn’t fair!” he shouted after her, realizing too late that half of the other supernatural creatures in town could probably hear him. Immediately his head whipped around to see if Chapman had heard, but the man seemed to be absorbed completely in his task.  

 

* * *

 

It took approximately three weeks for Rudyard to adjust to having Eric Chapman on the island. In the grand scheme of his life, this wasn’t a very long period of time, but every second watching Chapman felt like 75 years. Of course it was annoying, but there was nothing he could do. All his attempts at sabotage had ended in nothing. Each time he took an action against Chapman’s funeral parlor the other man seemed to be two steps ahead of him.

And of course, this meant instances of Chapman annoying Rudyard were at an all time high. Everytime they would encounter each other on the street, Chapman would be affable and polite to the extreme.

It was _infuriating_.

After weeks of that sort of interaction, Rudyard had enough.

It started out as a normal day- the classic casual banter he had almost gotten used to, much less cheerful and more sarcastic on his end- but when Chapman turned to clap his hand on Rudyard’s shoulder, the vampire was nowhere to be seen.

Eric had started to turn, smile bright and and cheeks flushed in a way that Rudyard could never even hope to achieve. He flew away before he could see the look deflate into something resembling disappointment.

The emotional turmoil had been too much to bear. One second he was there, the next he was flying off towards the darkest corner of the island he could find. Which was coincidentally back towards Funn Funerals.

Except he wasn’t thinking clearly enough to avoid the new obstacles. With his mind elsewhere, Rudyard smacked right into an invisible barrier, his echolocation ringing through his brain. His mind was too muddled to realize he’d run right into the beginning of the newest development Chapman had started building.

As if the day wasn’t bad enough.

Curling in on himself, Rudyard brought his wings in around his body, covering the whole of his form in a shivering blanket.

Everything was too bright. It was horrible.

The seconds passed slowly, the ringing fading into an echo of pain that spread through all of his bones.

There was a noise, and Rudyard flinched in order to burrow away from the sound into the dirt.

Something gentle covered his form, cupping around his body and shielding him from the sun. He screeched out a question, looking for Antigone. Surely she would be the only one who would pick up a prone bat in the middle of town square? But there was no sarcastic answer to his screeching call.

“You poor thing,” came a crooning voice.

Of course it was Chapman, Rudyard had never been very lucky and this was exactly the kind of thing that always happened to him.

“It’s nowhere near evening, you must have been very confused,” the voice continued, heedless of Rudyard’s screeching protests.

Disoriented as he was, he tried to claw his way out of Chapman’s hold. Tiny bat claws were not effective for getting stupid sexy mortician’s hands to let go of him. The hands closed around his form tighter, squeezing a squeak from him.

Rudyard squeaked once more in protest, to which Chapman responded with a shush.

Disgruntled but resigned, Rudyard relaxed into the firm hold and let the warmth radiating off of Chapman's hands spread through him. It was comforting, if he forgot that Chapman was the one holding him.

“So, I’m going off of a few google articles and a few half remembered zoology classes so feel free to squeak at me if you think I’ve got this wrong,” Chapman continued.

Rudyard squeaked, but the other undertaker paid him no mind. There was a rustling movement, and before Rudyard knew it he was being tucked into a soft towel and placed inside a paper bag. It was warm and…

Within seconds Rudyard was drifting into sleep.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, time to get up for a second. I’ve got some hummingbird nectar, it seems like something bats would eat? Google also said insects but I didn’t have much luck catching any, but I could order some,” Chapman trailed off.

Rudyard blinked, his eyes betraying only a vague outline of Chapman’s shape. Following his nose, he scooted forward until he met the edge of ceramic dish. A cautionary lick told him it was full of a sticky sweet syrup.

It tasted good enough, had Rudyard the proper anatomy, he would have shrugged in response.

This was probably better than whatever Antigone and Georgie were going to pull together for dinner tonight. There was entirely too much red meat in the parlor for his tastes, both of their tasted tended towards the bloodied. Being a vampire- he couldn’t judge them for it, but he was tired of it.  

Of course, if he went home he wouldn’t have to deal with Chapman. His will restored, Rudyard turned his nose up at the dish and crawled back into the bag under a jilted, injured gait.

And again the hands pulled him out from the bag, taking each wing and spreading the thin bones. “The wing integrity looks good, I don’t understand what’s wrong with you.”

Rudyard chirped at being manhandled, the sound echoing off the interior and feeding him more information about the environment. They were not in Chapman’s funeral parlor- actually, if he didn’t know better he’d say this was Chapman’s bedroom.

Chapman ran a finger under the side of Rudyard’s left wing, hitting a spot that made Rudyard react on instinct.

“Fuck,” Chapman jerked back, his finger bleeding from Rudyard’s bite.

They were both in pain now, and Rudyard preened at that fact. Getting free from Chapman’s grip, he clawed his way up the coat of Chapman’s arm and hid between the man’s neck and jacket collar.

Let’s see him try and poke at him from here. He could keep biting fingers all day, so long as he disregarded the innuendo of the phrase.

Though he remained on alert, Chapman didn’t reach for him. He sighed and went over to a forgotten laptop, typing sometime into the keys that Rudyard’s bat eyes couldn’t distinguish on the screen.

It was decidedly _not_ comfortable, and he was definitely _not_ soothed by the steady sound of Chapman’s breathing. And if anyone was around to see, well, they couldn’t tell anyone.

 

* * *

 

When Rudyard woke again, he was on something that moved. It took a few seconds for the gentle rocking motion to set in for what it was. He was on someone’s chest. Someone who was very much alive and not stuck in a stasis of undeath like most of his family.

Rudyard snuggled closer to the sense of warmth, pushing his pride to the side for the moment in favor of comfort. He honestly couldn’t recall the last time he’d been this warm.

Of course, the moment didn’t last. It was broken by Chapman’s voice yet again. “Oh so now you’re going to behave?”

Rudyarded twitched his nose in response, turning his body towards Chapman’s head and taking extra satisfaction in the way his claws pinched tiny holes in the fabric of his shirt. He revelled in the warmth radiating from his chest, and the feeling of his breathing, and...

Wait a moment….

Chapman was warm, and bright and sunny and almost hopelessly naive. The man wasn’t paranormal or supernatural at _all_. Not a rival vampire or a new werewolf on the scene. Not a dullahan or a banshee. The man was, as far as he could tell- disturbingly human.

Rudyard allowed a small moment of panic to set in. It explained everything. Why Eric Chapman acted with what appeared to be reckless abandon for his own safety. Could he simply have no idea of what the possible repercussions could be?

Following this train of thought, Rudyard crawled from the man’s chest to his face, walking all over it in an attempt to rouse the other man completely. They needed to talk- but if Chapman was unaware of the supernatural he couldn’t very well change back into a human right in front of the man.

Human being a relative term in this instance.

The world tilted as Chapman sat up in what Rudyard realized was a bed. Probably Eric’s bed, but the bat scampered down his face and onto his arm. Nose sniffing around the man’s skin to find any hint of blood.

There wasn’t one.

There should have been. It might be stale, but Rudyard had bitten his fingers- and he hadn’t been cautious about it either. Vampirism couldn’t be spread to other supernatural creatures, and that’s what Rudyard had thought Chapman was.

Rudyard let a keen escape. Oh god, had he infected Chapman? The man in question curled around the small form in his arms to protect it from whatever was making it make that noise. Being cradled to the other man’s chest allowed Rudyard a fine chance to listen to the steady thrum of Eric Chapman’s heart. He’d never been so happy to hear one.

Rudyard made his way back towards Chapman’s face, crawling up the back of his hair to sit on top of his head. It was a better vantage point, regardless of how useless his sight was in this form. Eric swatted at him ineffectually, eventually shrugging to get on with his morning with a bat sat in his hair.

After a few minutes, Eric reached an impasse with his morning routine.

“I have to shower now, so you’re going to have to get off,” Chapman conversed, carefully taking the bat in his hands and transferring it to a suit coat he had hanging on a peg. The darkness was a welcome aspect, but now all Rudyard could smell was Chapman.

It was maddening.

Regardless of his circumstance, he was glad for the chance to think in private. Burrowing a pocket, he tucked himself into a ball.

So he’d been injured. At least a day had passed, Antigone wouldn’t start to worry unless it stretched into a week. That was all fine, his real problem was what to do about Chapman. Did anyone else on the island know that he was human?

Did everyone else on the island know he was human?

Rudyard chittered in annoyance. There was no way for him to find out unless he left, and if he left Chapman would worry- but then again why would he care if Chapman worried?

If everyone found out Chapman was human would they make him leave?

If Chapman found out everyone wasn’t human would he want to leave?

Some residents off Piffling weren’t as careful around humans as others. Insular living does that to one after a couple hundred years. There could very possibly be a negative reaction to Chapman finding out the truth, if he took it badly.

_Why did he suddenly care?_

He’d wanted the man gone for weeks. Here was an opportunity handed to him on a platter. That was all before… before Chapman picked him up out of the dirt and tried to take care of him. Sure, he didn’t know who or what he was picking up. That didn’t change the fact that the act in itself was entirely selfless.

And it was dammed endearing the way Chapman talked to him like a friend.

Almost like the man had never had one before.

Rudyard huffed, he could hear the sounds of the shower clearly each drop echoing off of tile or skin- and that was enough of that, especially in this form. Now would be a prime time to investigate to see if Chapman was really human, and if he was, to figure out why a human would want to live in Piffling Vale.

After waffling over what to do for a few minutes, Rudyard made a decision.

Crawling out of the pocket, Rudyard realized he had made a grave mistake. There was no way that he could look through Chapman’s belongings as a bat. That wasn’t his mistake though, the mistake was that he’d poked his head out just in time to see Chapman exit the bathroom in nothing but a towel.

Rudyard flapped his wings in surprise with a screech, tumbling forward out of the pocket. A strong downward stroke from his wings kept him from face planting into the floorboards, but increased the pain in his left wing exponentially.

That's when everything went tits up with the sound of a small snap.

With a shriek, Rudyard flopped bonelessly on the floor with his wings spread out. For the fuck of Christ, that hurt.

Chapman walked over and picked up Rudyard again, settling the bat on his shoulder. Which was very much still not covered in clothing.

This was hell, this was actually hell. He died when he smacked into that window and this was his punishment for living two centuries of the most mundane life a vampire could have.

Rudyard was all too aware of the warm, bare skin underneath his claws, and his ears felt like they were on fire. It was uncomfortable and unnerving the way the feeling prickled under his skin and along his wings. Well, the one good wing anyway. Nothing but pain was coming from the left one. It must be a broken finger, which was more of an issue with this form than it would be if he could simply change back.

Not that he wanted to do that now when he was practically- or literally, on top of the man.

This was something he was never going to live down if word got out. Sitting here being coddled by a hapless human. Or a hapful one, he really wouldn’t know until he did some investigating.

Eric chuckled at something, scratching the bat under the chin with his index finger.

Investigating could wait.

Eric transferred him from a shoulder to a pillow, leaving to go and grab a change of clothes before reentering the room.

“I’m going to splint this and you should try and keep still,” Chapman whispered. His blue eyes impossibly close as he examined the wing that Rudyard was keeping splayed out on the table.

The membrane was slightly swollen where it stretched over the long bone closest to Rudyard’s body. It would be gone in an instant if he fed, but that would involve a trip back to the morgue and an awkward conversation with his twin, like a walk of shame but easily twenty times worse. So here he was, with blunted toothpicks lined up on either side of the bone. They were the only things that were small enough to fit alongside the bone.

Eric, was staring hard at the wing. Looking for an answer to a problem Rudyard couldn’t see.

“Maybe if I glue them? Is that safe?” Eric mused. “Staples and sutures are definitely out of the question.”

Rudyard chittered, since chittering was a better alternative than screeching.

The glue was medical grade, probably. Eric wouldn’t straight up use children’s paste on a wound would he? He was a mortician, he had to have something that was relatively body safe to glue people’s various body parts back into submission for the viewings.

The deed was done before he could consider it further, Eric bringing his face forward to blow on the glue so it would dry.

Chapman’s face was inches away from him. Rudyard’s nose twitched, craning his neck forward so he could lick Eric’s nose.

The other man reeled back, surprise clear as day on his face. Rudyard chittered hard enough for it to sound like a laugh. Eric sat back and laughed along with him. Rudyard’s other wing flexed to keep him still so the glue could dry the rest of the way.

“You’re getting cheeky,” Chapman accused, pointing his finger at the bat on the table. A finger which Rudyard also licked. That proved to be a fatal mistake as Rudyard blanched at the taste of antibacterial soap and hand sanitizer.

Eric chuckled as Rudyard sputtered and moved on to wrapping the wing to his side with gauze.

It left one wing free and eased the throbbing pain in his side.

Eric was cutting the final piece of gauze when it happened: Chapman swore, something clattered to the table very near Rudyard’s ear, and the smell of blood permeated the room.

Before he knew what he was doing, the bat rolled onto its stomach and flapped forward with one wing, fastening his teeth around the bleeding finger in the space of one heartbeat.

On instinct, he sucked and felt the fresh blood hit his tongue. It was like oranges and caramel and nothing like either of those things.

Very slowly, a hand covered Rudyard’s form, gently prying the the bat’s teeth off the finger in question.

The worst part was, Chapman didn’t say anything. He simply sat the bat back down on the table, grabbed a towel to put over the creature and left the room without so much as exhale.

Rudyard hobbled out from underneath the towel just in time to hear the front door slam shut. Shuffling backwards, Rudyard did his best to hide inside the towel where he had been left. What else could he do? Go after Chapman and apologize?

Why had Chapman reacted so differently to this bite?

Did he _know_?

That was stupid, there’s no way that Chapman had figured out he was a vampire.

Then again… he shouldn’t have done that without permission. It was part of his code, part of the code for living on Piffling Vale. Never use your abilities on someone without asking permission first, it was a way of keeping things fair for everyone.

If you thought about it, he was breaking two of those rules by staying here. Chapman didn’t know he could turn into a bat. He needed to talk to him, he had to talk to him. 

 

* * *

 

It had been about a week since he was taken into Chapman’s care. The man was hardly home, but even with the multitude of opportunities available to him, Rudyard couldn’t find it in himself to rifle through the man’s belongings after his revelations.

In fact, he couldn’t even bring himself to return to human form.

He’d tried too when Eric was out of the house after the second bite, he'd closed his eyes, heard a pop, and then a resounding nothing happened.

Worry had set in that, somehow, Rudyard had lost the ability to transform back and forth, and more importantly that Antigone was going to have a field day over this entire situation. As if he didn’t need more reasons to avoid his own home.

So he couldn't leave, and he couldn't turn into a human to explain everything to Chapman, he was quite literally stuck in this situation.

Staying with Chapman was becoming… routine in a way that filled his heart with warmth and his wings with a fuzzy numbness. If he stayed longer, which he could see himself doing all too easily, he could see himself forgetting what his life had been like before Eric Chapman.

It got under his skin in a way that nothing else in his life ever had. In two-hundred years nothing had affected him on this level.

With a sigh, Rudyard climbed his way across Chapman’s flat to look out the window. He could leave as a bat and just avoid Funn funerals until Chapman died and the situation resolved itself. Antigone would be cross for a few decades, but she'd get over it. It was the only option he had right now other than staying here.

He could leave, but he didn’t want to.

The sound of the door brought Rudyard out of his thoughts.

Rudyard turned around, already chittering something at Chapman.

Except that it wasn’t Chapman, it was _Georgie_.

The werewolf smirked, holding out a hand to present a spider riding a mouse.

Rudyard squacked indignantly, wheeling back and flapping with one wing off the ledge to jump to the four poster canopy over Chapman’s bed. His bone had healed after his taste of blood, but Chapman hadn’t removed the improvised splint yet.

This was so embarrassing.

“Rudyard get down from there, I know you don’t trust Chapman but sneaking into his house?” she barked, tossing Antigone onto the bed so the spider could clamber up the bedpost herself. “What have you been doing here that took over a week?”

Rudyard went to ditch his hiding spot, but smacked his recently healed wing into the wooden frame holding up the curtains around the bed. His claws slipped from the sheer fabric and he fell right into the center of the soft duvet with a small puff of dust.

“Rudyard!” Came Antigone’s soft silky voice. She had crawled back down the bed frame to survey her brother’s apparent injuries.

“What on earth happened to you? You complete- Rudyard your wing.”

“Yes what about it, Antigone?”

“It’s bandaged.”

“Oh really? I hadn’t noticed. That explains the restricted movement,” Rudyard avoided the question while sidestepping to avoid his sister as she transformed back into her human form and moved to pick him up. Antigone lunged across the bed and managed to trap him. She always was the fastest of the two.

“Don’t pick me up! We’ve had a conversation about the manhandling!” Rudyard struggled, clawing his way out of her hands.   

“Oh you’ll get over it, you _disappear_ for _days_ , no word at all. Then complain when we come rescue you,” Antigone scoffed, making her way back out the door.

“I don’t _need_ rescuing!” Rudyard hissed.

Then he did something incredibly stupid, he bit Antigone right on the finger and then rolled under the thin space on the floor beneath a dusty wardrobe.

In seconds Antigone was hot on his trail, already back in her spider form.

Rudyard shrieked and tried to shimmy from under the wardrobe to under the dresser, Antigone clicked back something uncomplimentary that he was not going to translate from angry spider to English.

Georgie stood in the middle of the room and rubbed her forehead.

“You guys, Chapman’s already on his way back. I’m leaving. Antigone come on, if Rudyard wants to stay and be somebody’s pet then that’s his business,” Georgie huffed a sigh, and was off without either of the Funns.

The one door slipped shut and another slammed open.

Rudyard wriggled out from under the furniture and shrieked at the top of his tiny bat lungs.

Chapman thundered up the stairs, skidding to a stop in the middle of his bedroom like he expected to see the bat being attacked.

“What on earth has gotten into you?” Chapman asked, scooping up the bat without hesitation.

The screeching stopped immediately, and Rudyard gave a soft chirp to locate if Antigone was still around. Her echoes came back from the roof, where Antigone was scuttling along the crown molding with extreme prejudice.

“You are filthy, did you injure yourself again?”

Rudyard stuck his tongue out and sneezed. A cloud of dust swirling around him catching the light.

“You’re hopeless.”

Rudyard was stuck looking up at Chapman’s blue eyes again. How many questions were there behind those eyes?

God, he really was hopeless.

 

* * *

 

Being with Chapman had started to drive Rudyard batty. Sometimes their easy rapport would shift. Chapman would look at him for too long, open his mouth to speak and think better of it. Going from warm and chatty to closed off and stony at the drop of a hat.

There was nothing for it, he needed to talk to Chapman, find out what he knew and why he was acting this way- and make apologizes of his own for the rules he had broken. Even if he hadn’t meant to do that, he’d still done it.

He had tried apologizing as a bat, nosing his way through Eric’s hair and chittering softly.

But Rudyard couldn't seem to get through to the other man. At the very least, things went back to the way they were during the early days of their acquaintanceship after that, less of the ‘silent as a brick wall’ and more of the ‘carefree rambling’ Rudyard was used to.  
  
With a sigh, he clawed his way to the top of the 4 poster bed to hide in the curtains above. It was one thing to stay here while he recovered? But what was he doing now?  
  
He had no other reason to stay here with Chapman.  
  
It was selfish of him.  
  
Time to face the music that sung in the back of his head every time he looked at Chapman. The reason he didn't want to leave.  
  
He _felt_ things for the man. The man who had been kind, even when he did nothing to deserve his consideration. Here he was having done nothing to deserve that trust, deceiving Chapman with lies of omission and gaining access to his private life. It wasn't right.  
  
He had to leave.  
  
With that thought in mind, he gave his previously injured wing an experimental flap. Who was he kidding? It had healed days ago. Leaving wasn't the problem. It was mustering the courage to leave. To begin living his life again with these newfound, dare he say, feelings for Piffling Vale's newest resident.  
  
He wanted Chapman to think as kindly of his human form as he did of his current form. Decision made, he wiggled his wing free of the bandage.  
  
Taking a deep breath, Rudyard flew down to the windowsill that had been left cracked for a breeze, squeezing under it and flapping out into the last rays of sunset.  
  
Finding a tree that he judged to be a safe distance from the house, Rudyard let the transformation wash over him for the first time in weeks. If he got anxious again, it would be difficult to maintain his human form, but that was better than having no access to it at all. His body relaxed into its natural form like water filling a jug. In his hand was the remnants of the splint that Chapman had rigged up.

He sighed, turning his head to look back at the flat on top of Chapman's parlor. The lights were on in the front, it wouldn’t be long before Chapman figured out he'd left.  
  
Would he worry?  
  
He felt rooted to the spot as he watched the light in Chapman's room come on, his face briefly coming into the frame provided by the window. He looked contemplative. Like he was going to say something but paused, looking around as he moved out of frame.  
  
It was done now, at any rate.  
  
Rudyard turned to walk away, but the sound of the window sliding along it's frame caught his attention. He turned back to see Chapman leaning out of the window, staring up at the sky like he was searching for something.  
  
Looking for him.  
  
Chapman looked down, eyes locking with Rudyard's, caught in the act of staring up at him like some Shakespearean vessel of teenage angst. Instead of freezing, Rudyard gave a wave and turned around to hide the hot flush creeping over his face and covering his ears.  
  
That could have gone better.  
  
He stalked off towards the Funn Funerals building before he could incriminate himself any worse.  
  
"Rudyard!" Came a voice that he had grown to be familiar with, he turned to see the door of Chapman's funeral parlor open with a panting Chapman leaning on the door knob.  
  
"Eric?" Rudyard replied out of habit, making the entire situation painfully worse.  
  
"Um, have you-" Chapman trailed off, looking back up at the sky. "You know what, nevermind. Have a good evening, Rudyard."

 

* * *

 

For the next few weeks, Rudyard returned to Chapman’s window nearly every night. Clawing around the frame until Chapman would come over and let him in. He simply couldn’t sleep anymore unless he could hear Chapman’s steady breathing.  

“If you’re going to stay over so much, I’m going to start charging you rent.” Chapman would say, but every night he opened the window anyway. The first time he had returned, Eric had looked so relieved that Rudyard almost couldn’t muster the cruelty to leave the next day.

And he hadn’t confronted Eric about his weird behavior on the night he left in either form.

The first night Chapman had seemed surprised to see him, but the slight smile that graced his face seemed to light a small sun within Rudyard’s chest.

It kept him coming back. Even though he knew that he shouldn't.

The taste of Eric’s blood stayed in Rudyard’s memory. The memory of something forbidden and enticing. He had no idea why a human’s blood affected him so much, to crave more, it had never been a problem before.

And then he started to fall in love.

It was the small things he noticed first. Looking for Eric’s blond hair in a crowd regardless of what form Rudyard happened to be in. Sitting at home and wondering what the man was up to when Rudyard wasn’t with him. Worrying about his safety.

It was maddening.

Something else was different about how Eric would act when Rudyard spent time with him in his bat form. He was more willing to reach out to the bat and hold him, carrying him to different rooms whenever Eric had need of something from his living room instead of simply leaving him alone in the room as he had done in the past.

On one memorable occasion, Eric had picked him up, walked sleepily to the fridge for a drink of milk, left Rudyard in the fridge, and carried the milk back upstairs and into bed.

He realized his mistake within minutes, but Rudyard had still found time to panic over whether he would be the first vampire to freeze to death in a refrigerator.

On another occasion, Eric burned himself trying to use the fire irons to reposition a log in the fire. The iron left a perfect whirl of the metals’ wrought iron pattern into the palm of his hand as he swore up and down the house to get burn cream for it.

Rudyard’s blind panic was tempered by the fact that as a bat there was little more he could do than squawk and nose at the bandaged that Chapman had sloppily wrapped around his dominant hand. Humans were so fragile and there was nothing he could do about it other than try to keep an eye on him.

One day he worried he would be too late to help.

The more time passed with this… arrangement, the more unstable it became. He wanted to speak with Eric. He wanted to hold him.

And the worst part of it was that Rudyard had done this entirely to himself.

 

* * *

 

“Rudyard, you can’t keep going over there.” Antigone positioned herself right in the doorway, as if that could stop him if he were determined to leave.

He huff, put on the defensive by the fact that this conversation was happening at all, “Says you.”

“Yes, says me! Now listen to me, you complete idiot of a little brother. You’re digging your own grave with him.”

Ha, _grave_.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose, “You think I don’t already know that, Antigone? I’m well aware of how truely fucked I am.”

“He’s a human, _Rudyard_ , he doesn’t even know half of the things that go on in Piffling Vale. This whole thing is untenable, it cannot last.”

Rudyard hissed at her, more vampiric than human but just as annoyed. “I know, you think I haven’t lived with him off and on for months and hadn’t figured that out?”

“See! Even you admit that you’ve been practically living with the man, without telling him! Rudyard that isn’t right,” Antigone’s voice fell sharply.

He rubbed at his face. “I know.” He spoke softly before letting his human form melt away. He didn’t know what to do.

Two flaps into flying away from his problems, Eric Chapman poked his head through the door of Funn Funerals.

Because of course he did.

Rudyard just made a beeline for the man’s vest, crawling down between the vest and the shirt. He was hiding from his problems- about as literally as he could.

Eric’s arms took the sides of his suit jacket and wrapped them around his middle, providing Rudyard with yet another layer between himself and the world.

“I can, uh, come back later,” Eric said without looking at Antigone, his face was red.  

“We’re vampires!” Antigone shouted in his face.

Rudyard heard a pin drop four blocks away.

He scrambled up to poke his head out of the vest and give his sister the most betrayed look that he could, but she was looking at Chapman, who was looking down at him.

Eric coughed, looking somewhere between stricken and sheepish. “I uh- I did know that already. I mean, Georgie has wolf ears sometimes- and she rambles about things. It’s not like anyone else on the island is particularly secretive. We gave a merman’s pet seagull a burial not even a fortnight ago.”

“Oh, well, good!” Antigone flustered. She shifted her weight from left to right before looking up at the ceiling. “Well that’s great, you two should talk, bye.” She walked forward and pushed both of them out the door and slammed it behind them. Leaving both of them out on the stoop in the failing light of dusk.

“Well, that was dramatic,” Eric tried to joke, but his tone was nervous and flat.

Rudyard chittered his response, there was no point in keeping quiet.

“She’s right though, we should probably talk.”

 

* * *

 

The bedroom seemed warmer than usual. Rudyard’s claws worried the sheets of Eric’s bed as the other paced back and forth.

“I mean, at first I didn’t know. But then you started acting weird, and then there was the time with the blood, and then that second time where you bit my finger which was uh- weird,” Eric looked over at him. “I’m pretty sure this conversation would go better if you were a human and could actually say things back to me.”

Rudyard gave him his best impersonation of a shrug, wings flapping back to the bed with the effort of it.

“I mean, you don’t have to I don’t want to be rude and I know you’re more comfortable in that form but…”

He kept talking while Rudyard shut his eyes. The vampire focused on the liting tones of Eric’s voice and tried to calm down enough to transform. 

He felt the shadows twist, and then he was looking at Eric’s room from a completely different angle than he was used to seeing. Was the room really this small? 

Rudyard rushed to speak before Eric could interrupt, “I didn’t mean to- uh, let this go on for so long. At first I was curious, and I wanted to understand why you would move here, of all places and you were so infuriating and perfect.”

“You think I’m perfect?”

“Shut up,” Rudyard reflexively went with his sister’s favourite phrase. The heat was creeping in from the room to localize on his face, he was cursed, vampires don’t blush, but here he was, probably looking red as a tomato.

“Look, I’m not upset.”

“Why not?”

“Because, in your own strange way, you made me feel welcome here.”

“You’re welcome?”

“Listen, we don’t have to talk about it. You can go back to doing the bat thing, and we don’t have to make this any stranger than it already is.”

“You’d be okay with that?” Rudyard hated how hopeful he sounded.

“For now.”

 

* * *

 

Rudyard found himself hyper aware of his human limbs every moment he was around Eric. They spoke to each other more now, but Eric was quieter when Rudyard was able to respond. They were both used to being around each other in a different manner.

“You know, we’ve gone about this really stupidly.”

“Mmm?”

“Never mind.” Rudyard sighed and let his human form melt away. All the better to just snuggle into the blankets with.

“What are we doing Rudyard? What are we doing?”

Eric fell backwards on the bed, sending a puff of dust motes that swirled in the noon day light. The patch of sun splashed against the skin of Eric’s neck was tempting Rudyard. All he wanted to do was crawl up into it, curl against the that pulse raced under his skin.

He picked his way across the blanket, dragging himself as stealthily as he could manage.

And then he pounced, floppin a wing across Eric’s face.

He laughed, and Rudyard felt warm again. Like his own blood was rushing through his body in a way that it never had.

“That wasn’t much of an answer.”

Rudyard let the transformation melt away, wing turning into an arm as Eric grunted under the sudden change in weight.

“I don’t have an answer.”

“Mmm that sounds suspiciously like a lie.”

“Well _Chapman,_ what do you propose?”

“This.”

Eric cupped his hands around Rudyard’s face, pulling the vampire in to press their lips together. It was the barest of touches. Holding only for an exhale before they broke apart like the a wave on the shore.

“I-”

Rudyard opened and closed his mouth to try and form words.

Then he couldn’t talk, because he was a bat, again. Involuntarily. It’s been years since he’d had an accidental transformation.

Good god, the things this man did to him.

He shuffled from side to side, and then he bolted out the window.

Eric called after him, but Rudyard didn’t stop flying.

 

* * *

 

He wasn’t proud of running- the moment he’d gotten more than a few rows over from the square he’d wanted nothing more than to turn around and go back to Eric. He could explain things- he could get his thoughts in order and try to do things properly. If Eric was willing to give him a second chance.

God, Chapman literally drove him batty.

“Rudyard, get back here!” Eric yelled, skidding around the corner of a house and bracing on of his hands against his side.

Christ alive, he was _running_ after him.

Rudyard banked his wings and took a sharp turn into the forest, but he didn’t speed up. He kept a steady pace as he drew himself up to a clearing.

To stop, or not to stop. That was the question.

He stopped.

Later on, he would thank god that he’d made that decision.

“Rudyard-” Eric panted lightly, running up from the road and looking around in the air.

The form melted away as quickly as it had come on, leaving him sitting on the ground. His suit was mussed, but it wasn’t a completely lost cause yet. The condition of Eric’s suit wasn’t much better, for once, yet Eric still commanded the sunlight that fell on his skin like he was born to stand in the dim glow of dusk.

Rudyard laughed a little hysterically, “I am so fucked.”

“I beg your pardon?”

He shrugged, “It’s nothing. I’m sorry. Why did you come after me?”

“Why? Why did you run?”

“Because I panicked.”

“Ruydard-”

They both moved towards each other, Eric grabbing onto his arm and hauling him up from the ground. His touch was a brand on his skin, and Rudyard _wanted_. For the first time in his life and it was consuming him.

The glow on Eric’s skin had to be unnatural, no one could catch the setting sun like fire on their skin in quite the way he could. Maybe that was just what love did to people. Made them see the world in a whole new way.

“We could-”

The sharp crack of a branch breaking caused both of them to jump.

“Well, look at this. What a picture, practically gift wrapped for us,” a harsh American accent rang out.

Rudyard spun around with the single-mindedness that only an angry vampire could achieve, because of course the world would interrupt him when he finally had the guts to do something about his feelings. The men across the changed positions as they lurched through the shadows of the dying sunlight. It was unnatural and it set Rudyard’s fangs on edge. They were trying to flank them.

He knew what this was, knew who these people were, they were armed and walked with a cold determination born out of dogmatic practice.

His father had always warned him about people like those. Groups like this.

Hunters.

If this was how he was going to go out. He’d do what he could to keep Eric out of the crossfire. Rudyard bared his fangs in a feral smile. They picked a terribly unlucky day to visit the island.

They raised their guns and sighted them on him. Vampires weren’t invulnerable to bullets, they would hurt, but he would live. Why would they bring guns to a fight with a vampire instead of a crossbow?

It didn’t make any sense.

“Chill out vampire, we’re not here for you,” one of the men said with a sneer.

A shock of clarity settled over him. Their guns weren’t trained on him, they were aimed right over his shoulder, trained on Eric’s chest.

That just wouldn’t do.

It had been a very long time since Rudyard had been involved in an actual fight. He was confident that he could take down a few of them, but that would mean leaving Eric unprotected.

One of the men made his decision for him.

Contrary to popular belief, vampiric speed was not something vampires always had access to; only during an adrenaline rush could a vampire move at impossible speeds. The bullet exited from the gun, and Rudyard felt time slow around him before the sound of the shot rang out across the grass.

Well then, if that was how they wanted things to be, Rudyard was willing to oblige. After all, his experiences with the dead were quite expansive, and humans were so fragile. A broken bone here, a twist wrong there, an arm through the chest, a throat torn out, around the group fast enough that horror could barely dawn in of their eyes before they were taken out. He turned back to Eric, who was frozen in a moment of time his hand clutching the empty air where Rudyard’s jacket had been.

All around them was a symphony of blood and absolutely none of it tempted him, the sound of the bullet reached him as he turned back his back to Eric. A moment strung out in time, where he had a single chance to act on an impulse. He blurred to a stop and felt the sharp raze of a bullet impact his chest.

Eric flinched away from the sudden barrage of noise as four dead bodies fell to the grass.

One undead body fell with them.

“Rudyard!” he shouted, his voice echoing well past the range of a normal human’s, everyone on the island would have heard him. 

That was good, maybe Antigone or Georgie would hear and come help because Rudyard was on the ground, and he wasn't moving. Eric had never seen Rudyard so still, heart beating or not- Rudyard was constantly in motion. 

He rolled Rudyard over, cradling his head with one hand as the other frantically searched for an injury. An injury that he found right in the center of his chest, over the sternum, it was leaking a dark blue substance that gradually turned red as it was exposed to the air. Eric pressed his hands over the wound.

“Rudyard, talk to me, please.”

The vampire’s body was still as a statue but the blood, if that’s what it was, sluggishly wept from around the wound to coat his hands. Rudyard wasn’t breathing, and Eric didn’t even know if that was something that he needed to do.

Why hadn’t he ever asked questions about the vampire thing?

Eric tilted his head back and pressed their lips together in a mockery of the gesture they shared earlier. He released a breath into Rudyard’s lungs. The air rushed out when Eric released his hold on Rudyard’s nose. A moment passed, then another, and Eric leaned down to try again- he wasn’t sure what he was doing he didn’t know how to do CPR but he had to do something.

Then Rudyard was kissing him, pulling him down by the front of his shirt to press their lips together in a slide of heat.

Eric pulled away and Rudyard gasped for air, his eyes blinking open, “Christ alive, that fucking hurts.”

Eric let out a shrill laugh that echoed off of the woods and completely quited the clearing, “What good is being a vampire if you can still get shot?”

“I’ll be fine, but I can’t heal with the bullet in there.”

“You mean it’s still inside?” Eric’s voice was shrill.

“I wouldn’t be in as much pain if it wasn’t.”

“Okay, hold still.”

Eric grimaced as he stuck his fingers into the wound on Rudyard’s chest. He’d had to do similar things as a mortician of course. You couldn’t cremate someone with a pacemaker in or the battery would explode, so digging around someone’s chest for a piece of metal wasn’t a foreign process. That didn’t make it pleasant. A fingertip brushed against something that _burned_. He jerked but kept his hand as steady as he could, grabbing as his fingertips caught on the object and pulled it. It slipped through his blood covered fingers. Frustrated, he grit his teeth together and tried again, grabbing the fire in his hand and yanking.

Eric fell backwards with the bullet in his hand. It burned straight through his hand to rest on the ground.

“For the love of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he swore, clutching his hand to his chest.

“Eric-”

“For fucks sake, what?”

“D’you know that you’re uh- glowing? And have wings?

Eric’s head swiveled around to spot the two wings on his back, he’d expected something feathery but what he got was rather more bug like.

“Oh- that might, uh, explain a few things.”

“Help me up,” Rudyard said in a subdued voice. Eric used his good hand to pull Rudyard up into a sitting position.

As soon as he was upright, Rudyard reached out to pick up the bullet.

“No, don’t!”

“What?”

Rudyard’s hand closed around the bullet, picking it up as if it were no more than a regular piece of metal.

“What the fuck?” Eric asked. The breaths came faster suddenly as he realized what a truly fucked up situation he was in. That thing had _burned_ through his hand moments ago and Rudyard had almost died-

“This is pure iron, how the hell did they fire this from a gun? It’s a wonder it didn’t completely disintegrate on impact.”

Eric opened and closed his mouth, blinking slowly at the piece of metal. His rapid breathing developed into hyperventilation.

"Knowing you're a vampire is one thing and accepting the supernatural is another it's an entirely different thing to suddenly be attacked by men with guns who shot you and then all of this-" Eric waves his hand and gestured to himself. "This is crazy."

"Eric, Eric look at me," Rudyard said, with a smooth voice. The kind Eric had always assumed a vampire would have. "I need you to breath in for four counts, hold it, and breath out for four counts." He slipped the piece of iron into his pocket where it would be out of sight and out of mind for the moment.

It was easier said than done, but after a few minutes, Eric managed to measure out his breaths enough to get air back into his lungs, and get the oxygen back to his brain.  

“What does this mean? For me?”

“I think you’re some sort of fey.”

“How could I not have known? I’m thirty-three years old and all this time I’ve thought that I was just the same as everyone else.”

“It’s possible that everyone around town thought that you already knew and didn’t bring it up, you come across as remarkably well adjusted and took the overall strangeness of the village in stride.”

Georgie had said something the first day Chapman had come to down about the mayor letting someone ‘unaware’ into the village, he hadn’t thought much of it at the time. Maybe she'd been cross he was unaware of his heritage instead of being unaware of the supernatural.

He’d had other things on his mind at the time, all of them Eric Chapman.

Rudyard couldn’t take his eyes off of him. Never could quite manage it in the past either. He’d always looked at Eric, noticed the downy gold hair, the blue eyes, the sun kissed freckles, the way he would move- and thought that it was all part of his own enamored mind. Things that should have given him pause hadn’t triggered any reaction in him. Not even when Eric had been burned by the iron fire poker. He’d thought it was just too close to the flames.

Eric twisted, trying to get a better look at the shimmering refraction from his wings. They scattered a multitude of colors on the ground like droplets of crystal. The sun wasn’t even up anymore, the light was coming entirely from Eric.

He straightened up, brushing some of the blood on his hands off on his suit before reaching down to help Rudyard up, “Okay, tabling all discussion about this for later. I have one other question."

 Rudyard jerked to his feet with Eric's help. "Yes?"

"Should I be worried about fitting in around town? I don’t know if these things are permanent additions," Eric said as he took his hand.

Rudyard laughed, one hand pressing against the hole that leaked more blue blood onto his shirt to stem the flow of blood from the movement.

“If there’s anywhere you’d fit in like this, it’s Piffling Vale.”

“Well then, let’s go home.”

“Yes, lets.”

**Author's Note:**

> Check out my profile for links you can find me at.
> 
>  
> 
> [Oh, join us on the Wooden Overcoats discord chat if you haven't already.](https://discord.gg/a7kzYYK)
> 
> Title is from the poem Like Angels, Winged by Michael R. Burch.


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